Aotearoa Daily Kōrero 04/11/2023
Aotearoa Daily Kōrero 04/11/2023
Welcome to today’s daily kōrero!
Anyone can make the thread, first in first served. If you are here on a day and there’s no daily thread, feel free to create it!
Anyway, it’s just a chance to talk about your day, what you have planned, what you have done, etc.
So, how’s it going?
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Whenever I get stressed I start changing things: in the last week or so I've swapped Win11 for linux, then decided I miss my software so of course Mac is the next sensible(?) alternative, so I've been obsessively reading up on making the switch from win/android and have all the pricing memorised. I'm exhausted, lol.
Has anyone made the switch to apple and developed Opinions?
I use them all*. Windows, macOS and Linux, on a daily basis. They all have their own strengths and weaknesses.
Why settle for one when you can enjoy the best of all worlds?
AMA.
* Except iOS; I've used it in the past but found it too limiting for my liking. macOS however is just fine.
Mostly I'm off the idea of AI being bolted onto windows, and I'm going through an anti-google phase so I'm liking the privacy side of Apple/Mac, and I like the tight integration between phone and macbook.
What was it about ios that was too limiting? I like tweaking my stuff with different themes and whatnot but I'm guessing I can't do that on mac? I looked up a few bits of software that I'd be interested in using and it all looks to be subscription-based, is that the case for most apps developed for mac?
First off, iOS =/= macOS, iOS is what's used in iPhones, and macOS is for Macs.
In my case, automation/scripting and setting up custom hotkeys or gestures to do various things, is a key requirement for me in any OS. In Windows I use AuthHotkey and PowerShell, in Linux I use ydotool+Fusuma and bash/Python, for macOS it's Keyboard Maestro and zsh, finally on Android I use Tasker+Edge Gestures and bash. Unfortunately there's not much of a choice for iOS; there's Apple's own Shortcuts feature, but it's quite limited in what it can do (although admittedly the limitations are more due to the nature of the OS itself).
To give you an example, on Android I've got a Tasker profile which automatically announces the name and artist of the currently playing track on Spotify, just like how you'd hear on a radio - this is super handy for me as most of my music listening is done when I'm in the shower or doing other chores and don't have my phone handy - and thanks to the announcements, I can make a mental note of what was playing, and if I like the track/artist, I'd look it up later on. I can't picture how to do this on iOS. There's a bunch of other Tasker tasks as well which have no equivalents on iOS, as well as nothing similar to the Edge Gestures app which allows me to map custom gestures to various apps/actions/Tasker tasks.
My other requirement from an OS is the ability to freely install apps of my choice without being restricted - and iOS again fails in that regard, due to lack of sideloading. On Android, you can find a ton of indie apps on github or alternative stores like F-Droid, which aren't available on the Play Store - and these sort of apps will never see the light of day on iOS for various reasons. For instance, one app that I really like is Shelter, which is an opensource app that allows you to create a second user profile, which is handy for multi-accounting/testing/separating your work apps etc. AFAIK, there's no such app for iOS. Another Android app that I like is App Cloner - this one allows you to modify various bits of the cloned app for privacy - you could for instance spoof your location, or set the app to use a proxy server of your choice (or a list of proxy servers). Then there's AdGuard the app, which allows system-wide ad blocking with HTTPS filtering (which you can't get with a simple DNS-based ad blocker). I could write an entire essay about similar limitations, but yeah, long story short, iOS is incredibly limiting for my use cases.
Thankfully, macOS is nothing like that. Yes, I can't have custom themes like Linux, but I can at least automate pretty much everything thanks to third-party apps like Keyboard Maestro, and have the freedom to install all my favorite CLI tools via Homebrew. My main issue with macOS is it's shoddy support for gaming, but that's where my Linux laptop/PC comes into the picture. :)
Thanks for such a detailed reply, it's always good to get specific examples of how people use their devices. I asked my aunt who swears by Apple and the only reply I got was 'Just buy it!' which is encouraging but not very helpful.
Mostly the tweaking I do is superficial - definitely not as technical as what you do, and I don't have anything installed that didn't come from an official source so I think I might be okay in that regard. I think I'm overthinking the whole endeavour (because what else is an obsessive compulsive going to do??) because I have to learn something new. The last time I used an Apple computer I had to boot it with a 5" floppy disk, haha.
On the lemmy.nz matrix chat a while back people were talking about the new Macs with the new Apple chips. Apparently they are really nice, amazingly fast, but you can't run Windows on them anymore.
One thing I like about Android vs iPhone is how customisable it is. My wife hates using my phone because she can never work out how to find the app she wants, because it's so much different to her android phone. But it is just a different home screen I've installed, which isn't an option on iPhones.
I also install many apps from an alternate app store that has only free open source apps. I hope to one day move away from the Google app store completely.
I haven't double checked; but I think it was just that you couldn't dual-boot x86 Windows; which makes sense given the chip change. I guess the same underlying chip difference means you can't virtualise it either. But I'd imagine you can virtualise & run ARM Windows though; and as Intel/AMD fall further & further behind the efficiency curve Windows on ARM should continue to get better over time.
Indeed, you can run VMs on it, and the ARM version of Windows runs quite well under Parallels and UTM. ARM Windows also allows you to run x86 apps via emulation, and unless you're running a very heavy application or a game, you won't notice a difference. In fact you can even do some light gaming on the VMs (as long as it's not a DX12 game).
I use all three, although primarily run Linux and macOS.
I think Apple's hardware offerings have really beaten the competition with their new M-series chips just outperforming everyone else with significantly less energy. You also get the advantage of macOS being a UNIX system, so if you're familiar with Linux, the same principles apply.
I switched from running Linux on my Surface Pro 3, then Linux on a Dell XPS 15, to a 14" MacBook Pro with the 10-core M1 Pro. I still use Linux on my desktop and love it, but macOS is very similar to Linux and apple's portable hardware beats everyone else by about 3 years or more imo. There are definitely some apple universe quirks but I wouldn't consider anyone else for a laptop for another few generations of competitors attempting to catch up with where apple was in 2021.
I use Windows, Linux (CLI only) & MacOS. My gaming PC & work laptop are both Windows. Most of my work day is spent with an active terminal session to a linux cli somewhere; and any personal work I do is on my M1 Macbook Air.
The latter is by the far the best laptop i've ever used, with its unix underpinnings and homebrew its also got pretty much every linuxy thing I need and apart from gaming (which is apparently getting better all the time) app wise its also got all that I need too.
But then, mostly on that i'm in a web browser or a terminal as well so your mileage may vary.
Hardware wise because i'm not doing any heavy rendering or compiling etc the M1 chip has all the power i've needed in it; and it just sips battery. I don't use it heaps, but charge it maybe every couple of weeks; and it just doesn't really get hot either which is nice as I tend to use it in times where I won't have a desk etc; ie as an actual laptop.
I like that it doesn't get hot; I've got cooling pads for my laptop at the moment and they'll be coming out once the days start getting properly warm.
My work laptop is a Lenovo Thinkpad, its got 16GB RAM, but idles at over 8GB used just launching the normal apps I use plus all the corporate & security guff that's on it. Eventually it starts swapping like mad and i've kinda just got used to the tiny fan screaming away for half the day.